Reflections on Theology, History, and Culture

Jesus in the Apocalypse of John: Christological Findings

This post is part of an ongoing series examining the Christology of the Apocalypse of John.

Revelation’s Christological portrait paints Jesus as Lord through a variety of descriptors—names, images, and actions—but also through devotional identification of Jesus with Yahweh. Jesus functions as the visible form of Yahweh, the eternal God of Israel, whose redemptive work on earth and eschatological judgment deem him worthy of worship.

This portrayal of Jesus in Revelation thus accords with what Larry Hurtado calls the “binitarian monotheism” of the New Testament. In this understanding, “[t]here are two distinguishable figures (God and Christ), but they are posited in a relation to each other that seems intended to avoid a di–theism of two gods…. But the worship of Christ clearly shows a recognizably monotheistic concern shaping it.”[1]